SB 1387 adds Jewish identity to California’s statutory definition of ethnicity and requires state agencies that collect ancestry or ethnic-origin data to include a separate Jewish ancestry/ethnicity category on forms and in tabulations. The bill amends the Education Code, adds a new Government Code section (8310.2), inserts Jewish into the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s self-identification categories, and requires the Employment Development Department to collect Jewish ancestry data for certain disability programs.
The change is designed to produce disaggregated data about Jewish Californians for use in program monitoring, civil-rights enforcement, and public policy while preserving personally identifying information as confidential. Agencies, dashboards, and contracted data-collection vendors will need to update forms, workflows, and public reporting practices to comply.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires state agencies that collect ancestry or ethnic-origin data to add a separate collection category and tabulation for Jewish ancestry/ethnicity, publish aggregated results, and treat personal identifying information as confidential. It also inserts Jewish into California’s corrected list of race/ethnicity options used by the Department of Corrections and requires the Employment Development Department to include Jewish ancestry data in its program reporting.
Who It Affects
State agencies that directly collect or contract to collect ancestry or ethnic-origin data, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (for offender self-identification and the Offender Data Points dashboard), the Employment Development Department (for disability and family temporary disability insurance reporting), and third‑party contractors and vendors that administer forms or dashboards on the state’s behalf.
Why It Matters
This establishes a statewide, standardized place for Jewish identity in administrative data — a change that can reveal disparities, guide enforcement and funding decisions, and alter how researchers and advocates measure demographic representation. It also creates uniform obligations for data publication and confidentiality across multiple state systems.
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What This Bill Actually Does
SB 1387 is primarily a data-standards and reporting bill. It forces a change at the point of collection: whenever a state form offers ancestral or ethnic options, agencies must add a distinct Jewish ancestry/ethnicity choice and ensure that data are tabulated separately rather than rolled into residual or broad categories.
That requirement applies to in‑house collection and to any contractor working for the agency, so procurement, vendor contracts, and technical specifications will need updating.
The bill pairs new collection rules with publication obligations. Agencies must produce aggregated demographic reports and make those aggregates publicly available consistent with state and federal law.
To protect privacy, the statute treats personally identifying information as confidential and anticipates standard disclosure controls (for example, by limiting the granularity of published outputs). Agencies operating public dashboards will need to update data models, API outputs, and user interfaces to add Jewish as a discrete field and to show Jewish‑category counts where appropriate.Because several existing statutes referenced in the bill already direct standardized race/ethnicity practices, SB 1387 ties Jewish‑category reporting into those frameworks.
That means agencies must align new Jewish‑category handling with existing federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards and with the state’s subgroup reporting practices for Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander populations. Practically, agencies will face training needs (for intake staff and data processors), system changes (forms, databases, dashboards), and governance work (consistency across agencies and secure handling of confidential linkages).
The Five Things You Need to Know
State agencies must include Jewish ancestry/ethnicity as a separate collection category and tabulation on any form that allows respondents to select one or more ethnic or racial designations.
Data collected under the new Government Code provision must be included in every demographic report on ancestry or ethnic origins published by a state agency on or after January 1, 2027.
SB 1387 adds "Jewish" to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s list of voluntary self‑identification race/ethnicity categories used to generate the monthly Offender Data Points dashboard.
The Employment Development Department must collect Jewish ancestry/ethnicity data for disability and family temporary disability insurance claimants in accordance with the bill’s demographic requirements; existing law requires the department to implement its broader demographic collection rules by July 1, 2026.
To protect identities, the Penal Code’s published data rule remains: any race or ethnicity category with a population number under 50 must be reported only as "fewer than 50.".
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Defines ethnicity to include Jewish identity
This amendment expands the Education Code's statutory definition of "ethnicity" to explicitly include "Jewish identity." For agencies that use the Education Code’s language to frame civil‑rights protections or data collection, the change formalizes Jewish identity as an ethnicity for legal and administrative purposes. Practically, educational institutions that reference this definition will need to ensure their intake and reporting categories reflect the addition.
Requires a separate Jewish category and public aggregation
Adds a standalone statutory requirement: any state agency that collects ancestry or ethnic‑origin data must offer a separate collection category and tabulation for Jewish ancestry/ethnicity and publish the aggregated results on agency websites (subject to confidentiality rules). This section is the operational core: it mandates how forms and tabulations must be structured, requires public availability of aggregated data, and explicitly deems personal identifying information confidential. Agencies will need to update form templates, data dictionaries, and public dashboards to comply.
Inserts Jewish into CDCR self‑identification and preserves suppression rules
Amends the Penal Code's enumerated list of race/ethnicity options collected by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to include "Jewish." The department must continue preparing and publishing monthly demographic tables disaggregated by its self‑identification categories and must observe the existing privacy safeguard that reports any race/ethnicity category under 50 as "fewer than 50." For CDCR that means adding Jewish to intake interviews, training staff on new options, and mapping the new field into the Offender Data Points dashboard’s data model.
Directs EDD to collect Jewish ancestry data for disability programs
Adds collection of Jewish ancestry/ethnicity to the Employment Development Department’s demographic obligations for disability and family temporary disability insurance programs. The section also reaffirms that EDD must use federal OMB race and ethnicity categories and collect subgroup detail consistent with state subgroup reporting rules. In practice, EDD must add the Jewish option to claim forms and to its public, quarterly dashboard and ensure benchmarking to population estimates as part of its reporting.
Findings tying confidentiality to the California Constitution
Includes the statutorily required legislative findings that justify limiting public access to personally identifying information under Article I, Section 3 of the California Constitution. The text states the legislature’s intent to protect privacy while still publishing useful aggregated demographic data, which frames how agencies must balance disclosure and confidentiality when implementing the statute.
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Explore Civil Rights in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Jewish Californians — Gain formal recognition as an ethnicity in state data systems, which can reveal disparities and improve targeting of civil‑rights enforcement, social services, and community supports.
- Civil‑rights enforcers and researchers — Get a standardized data stream to analyze discrimination, participation rates, and outcomes for people identifying as Jewish, improving evidence for policy or enforcement actions.
- Community organizations and service providers — Can use disaggregated state data to justify funding requests, design culturally competent programs, and benchmark outreach effectiveness.
Who Bears the Cost
- State agencies and their IT teams — Must update forms, databases, reporting pipelines, dashboards, and procurement specs to add the Jewish category and to manage confidentiality rules, which consumes staff time and budget.
- Third‑party contractors and vendors — Firms that provide intake platforms, analytics, or dashboards for state agencies will need to revise products and contracts, incurring development and compliance costs.
- Department of Corrections and Employment Development Department — Face specific operational costs: CDCR must adjust intake scripts and dashboards and EDD must change claims systems and quarterly reporting processes and benchmarking logic.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill wrestles with two legitimate goals that pull in opposite directions: protect individual privacy and prevent reidentification, while producing disaggregated, actionable demographic data that exposes disparities. Adding Jewish as a discrete category increases visibility and accountability for a group that may face particular needs or discrimination, but it also increases the risk that small‑cell counts or improperly handled datasets will expose individuals — a trade‑off the law addresses only partially through confidentiality declarations and a blunt suppression threshold.
Two implementation challenges stand out. First, classification: Jewish identity can be religious, ethnic, cultural, or any combination, and the statute treats it as an ethnicity.
Agencies must decide how to frame questions (religion vs. ancestry), what guidance to give staff, and how to handle multi‑select responses — choices that affect data comparability across agencies and over time. Second, disclosure controls: the law preserves confidentiality but also requires public aggregates, so agencies must adopt suppression and statistical‑disclosure‑limitation practices that balance privacy and utility.
The existing Penal Code rule to report counts under 50 as "fewer than 50" is blunt and may remove visibility for smaller populations, limiting the very analyses the bill seeks to enable.
There are practical governance questions the bill leaves open. It references alignment with federal OMB standards but does not specify sequencing rules when federal categories change, nor does it set statewide metadata standards (question wording, code lists, multi‑select logic).
Those gaps will force agencies to negotiate common data standards, likely through administrative guidance or interagency memoranda. Finally, the statutory shift could produce legal and political pushback over whether a government classification of Jewish people as an ethnicity intersects with religious‑freedom protections or anti‑discrimination frameworks — an area where implementation detail will matter more than the bill’s headline.
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